Summary: NO (Incase you don’t want to read further)
I set out to build myself a new desktop recently and one of the decisions I had to make was “Do I go with DDR3, or stick with DDR2?”, then of course if you stick with DDR2, do you go with oldie 800 ram or shoot for the 1066 or higher but pay the premium? I wasn’t sure at the time, so I set out to some do some research, and here is what I found…
First off, DDR3 has been on the market for a while now, but you never hear about it for 2 reasons:
- It’s expensive as hell, usually about 2x the price of DDR2 ram or more.
- There is no noticeable performance improvement using it.
The reason for #2 is the same reason DDR2 wasn’t awesome right away when it first came out: the latencies are much higher and even though the bandwidth ceiling is much higher, we aren’t even maxing out what we have already… so it’s a moot point.
I was originally looking at building a machine using the Intel QX9650 and figured a quad-core beast with a 1333mhz FSB would definately need either DDR3 ram or the highest end DDR2 (1600?) RAM I could scrounge up.
Once I went looking and prices and realized that in some cases the price of 1GB of expensive DDR3 ram was the same price was 4GBs of DDR2-800 ram, I decided to look up some benchmarks to see if this mess was even worth it.
NOTE: For the folks that didn’t do a lot of computing in the 90s and building their own machines, finding “good” ram with awesome “timings” like 1 and 2 CAS latencies used to make a big difference, especially in gaming. But as computers have gotten faster and faster the difference good memory allows is completely negligible now except for overall stability… that is still important when buying good ram.
As I trapes’ed my way around online I ran across a great benchmark from Digit-Life comparing DDR2-800 to DDR3-1333… memory that couldn’t be farther apart on the performance scale; and exactly what I wanted. If there was a benefit to DDR3 this benchmark was going to make it clear.
The other great thing about this benchmark is that it used both the new, unreleased QX9770 and the QX9650 to saturate the memory with the fastest quad-core CPUs available today (and likely for the next 6 months). The results were surprising to say the least.
I immediately scrolled down to the most CPU-intensive task I could find, Video Encoding:
notice that there is absolutely no difference between the DDR2-800 and DDR3-1333 setups during this task?
Then I scrolled down to a normalized gaming score between the two and again, found almost absolutely no difference:
I figured with the added bandwidth provided by DDR3 that games atleast would be running faster with so much texture work to push, but apparently we aren’t even making full use of that is provided by DDR2-800 at this point… meaning something else in the PC is the bottleneck.
This is equatable to how SATA-2 connections allow for a 3GB/sec bandwidth right now, but a typical SATA hard drive will burst around 110MB/sec and sustain around 50-70MB/sec… no where near the 3GB/sec cap on the bus (unless you had some insane RAID setup).
So the good news from all of this is that you can safely buy DDR2-800 ram for $40/GB instead of the fucking crazy DDR3 ram for the forseeable future.
And don’t even bother with DDR2-1066 or higher DDR2 ram… I found benchmarks on those as well comparing to DDR2-800 that again showed almost no difference in performance.
Thanks a lot for your research, you saved a lot of (my) money
Ralph, I’m glad I could help!
Dear Riyad,
can you send me your pc specs? Maybe you also did some tests like 3D mark as well?
I’m trying to put a game-pc together for a low price and still good enough to play recent games in good resolutions…
Nelton,
The machine turned out being *awesome*, I am really happy with it about 70% because of it’s performance being better than I expected (the 8800 is a hell of a card) and 30% because the price was so damn cheap. I thikn you could build this machine for like $1400 today (NOTE: I didn’t need a monitor, if you need a monitor too it will be closer to $2k or 2100)
* 3.0 Ghz Dual Core E6850
* 4GB 800mhz DDR2 Ram (Corsair)
* BFG 8800 GT (the new 512mb GT that is as fast as the Ultra cards, not the original 256mb one)
* Corsair 620 watt Modular PSU
* 2x Seagate ES.2 750 GB Drives (the enterprise-SATA ones)
* ASUS MAXIMUS FORMULA
All of the hardware is great but I WOULD NOT recommend the ASUS boards anymore. The computer actually hangs on bootup at the memory detection phase (I tried 4GB of Crucial and Corsair, same thing) randomly. It’s a known issue that has not and may not be fixed by ASUS, I’m relaly annoyed by that. Luckily hitting the Bios-wipe button lets me reboot… but that means I can never successfully make any modifications to the BIOS and use the computer… luckily I don’t but it’s a fucked up position ot be in.
Great post! But I have to wonder why. 3-4 years back I bought a P4 3.2ghz northwood system with pc3200 dual channel memory which was twice as fast as my old system. All benchmarks were about 2X. Everything was about double my P1.6ghz (oc to 2.1ghz). I knew the ram was about double the speed. The system was responsive and fast. It couldn’t be just because the cpu was changed.
Comparing 800mhz to 1333mhz shows a 1% change in speed. But current computers are about double the speed of my system 3-4 years back with 400mhz ram.
So I now wonder. If I could put a new Q6600 quad OC’d to 3.6ghz with the older 400mhz ram. Would the ram be a bottle neck? Would it slow things down? OR could we simply just put 400mhz ram in new systems and have the same results?
If it’s true that 800mhz is needed today instead of 400mhz, then I would think that there must be a sweet spot for ram for these cpu’s. That’s what my guess is, but I have no way to prove it. If this is true, then it might mean that DDR3 will SOMEDAY be very useful if we get CPU’s that are maybe 1.5X to 2X faster than what we have now. Say maybe 2 years from now. It’s just a guess. But for today, I can see 1333 is a huge waste to build a new system. Thanks for the advise.
One other thought. Maybe those benchmarks are not improved much with faster ram. Could there be some other type of applications that would give a 66% speed improvement? Or probably not? If not, it must be that the cpu is the bottleneck somehow. hmmm.
jz,
I’m glad the article helped. There are two factors with ram that make it “fast”, and they seem to be mutually exclusive, they are:
* Latency
* Bandwidth
For some reason it seems impossible to have both, you either have 1 or the other. For example, most of these DDR2 sticks of ram have latencies of 2 and 3, but low bandwidth.
DDR3 is ultra-high-bandwidth, but has latencies of 5, 6 and 7. Twice as much latency as the DDR2 pieces.
So the question becomes “what will I see the biggest benefit from today?” and as you correctly stated, a lower latency stick of RAM is going to serve you better with today’s CPUs and peripherals than a higher latency ultra-fat-bandwidth stick of ram.
In a few years where games like Crysis are the norm, and to play a game you have to stream Gigabytes off your 300 MB/sec solid state hard drive, then ultra-high-bandwidth ram that can handle streaming insane amounts of data si going to be necessary and your lower-latency ram won’t make such a difference.
This is sort of the premise of the PS3, it doesn’t have that much ram on it, and *everything* is designed to be considered a stream… streaming audio, graphics, video, etc. but it does it as an insanely high rate of speed.
Honestly I expect whatever Nehalem+1 to really shine and Nehalem+2 to be truely next-next gen where DDR3/4 are “Absolutely necessary”.
So probably like 24/32 months from now. We should have the first Nehalem chips drop at the end of this year, so we’ll get a peak at what will come with the new redesign, but probably be 2010 before our pants are blown off by it.
thanks for this great comment on ddr2-ddr3, idont know too much about memory latency and stuff but wanted to do some research first on ram befre deciding to go for a ddr2 or ddr3 mobo
Jean,
No problem. I really don’t expect computers to take advantage of DDR3 ram and beyond until Intel releases Nehalem chips at the end of this year and into 2009. I’m sure in 2010 CPUs will be quite a bit faster and using higher bandwidth RAM. 2009 will be a year of CPU speed growth hopefully.
The Sweet spot for core 2 duo (memory wise ) is ddr 667. Look in wikipedia for more details.
Dude… Try it on the latest Core 2 Quad.
Mitra,
That is what the QX9770 is. Seriously, you aren’t going to start seeing performance differences until these chips are 4Ghz+ I don’t think.
Either way Nehalem is going to be DDR3 only I believe, so we are all going to revamping our systems next year anyway.
But if you want to build a fast budget machine, DDR2-800 all the way.
you chose only benchmarks that don’t need memory bandwidth, so of course you wont see any difference in performance.
Roy,
Please clarify how Video Encoding and Games aren’t memory-bandwidth intensive.
Besides running a straight-up memory bandwidth test, I can’t think of any other *normal* use for a computer that would use more memory bandwidth.
After all the purpose of the article is to point out that with current CPUs on the market, DDR2-800 ram is going to give you the same performance as high-speed DDR3 ram because the other components in the computer just aren’t saturating the existing memory subsystem.
So using a complete synthetic test that would never occur in the real world (synthetic bandwidth test) doesn’t help, because in the end everybody doing normal work with their PC are never going to realize those performance benefits.
Thanks for that. I’m going to upgrade my pc which I’m using for music (VST, Ableton and other stuff like this) and I’m going for DDR2. By this time when DDR3 will be good as DDR2 became the technological step forward will be so long that my next upgrade will be to DDR4
Cheers – Matt.
vst,
Glad it helped! And you are right, Nehalem (Intel’s next-gen) will required DDR3 and it’s due out late this year or early next, but with no competition from AMD, Intel is ramping up really slowly.
I have to imagine by the time they refine Nehalem or come out with Nehalem+1 (2 years from now) we will be onto DDR4 just like you said and be dealing with things like integrated CPU/GPUs that Intel is showing off and AMD/ATI are working on.
At that point, with so much happening “on the chip” I could certainly see a need for insanely high bandwidth that DDR4 will offer… but until then, like you said, DDR2 is still serving us just fine.
Editor
I find your article refreshing in comparison to many others revealing why ddr3 is now (as of mid 2008) a good reason to buy when compared to ddr2.
I found that many people asked (in forums) should I buy ddr2 800 or ddr3 1600? Most asked this question because they were wanting to build a new system. I think the answer has always been if you don’t value money then buy and build a ddr3 system. Otherwise look at this cost comparison:
scenario (ddr3)
Memory: 4Gb (2x2gb)ddr3 1600 (cas 6) GSkill – $295
Motherboard: nForce 790i Ultra SLI ddr3 EVGA – $320
CPU: E8500 Wolfdale Intel (3.16Ghz) – $190
Cost: $805
———————————————-
scenario (ddr2)
Memory: 4Gb (2x2gb)ddr2 800 (cas 4) OCZ – $65
Motherboard: nForce 780i Ultra SLI ddr2 EVGA – $220
CPU: Q9450 Yorkfield Intel (2.66Ghz) – $310
Total Cost: $595
Basically if you go with ddr2 system you save at total of $205 and a get a quad core instead of a dual core. Yes you might say the clock speed is slower on the quad and the memory bandwidth is less but with $205 saved you can get a good graphics card (maybe a 9800 GX2) which will boost your gaming experience and beat the other system – plus quad will mean that you overall application/system experience will be better/faster (esp. with Vista 64bit).
Correction your saving is $210
Alan,
You are exactly right. Not only on the savings but also on the folks that tend to drop the big bucks on the DDR3 ram, they just don’t care and want the braging rights.
Hopefully by the end of this year we’ll start to see DDR3 pull away from DDR2, but for the time being I’m just not seeing it.
Just the information i needed! Thank’s a lot!
No problem, glad it helped!
You are tha man! Thanks a lot… work on some keyword phrases like 800 1066 1333 comparison so everyone can find you easily
I had to search for “computer performance ddr2 comparison 800 1066 1333″
hahah everything else was useless…
Charles,
Thanks for the heads up, I think you are right, we could do a better job promoting this.
With Nehalem (Core i7) finally out though the landscape needs to be re-evaluated it as those chips do begin to take advantage of the DDR3 memory… so we may have to take another look at memory performance here in the following months for the cutting-edge readers (if I built a new machine today, I’d still do DDR2, it’s so damn cheap)
this is really interesting !
they have the DDR3 in the macs and that was one reason for me to buy it but now, i think i’ll continue with the pc operating system …
Dude this is the bomb so glad i found your article but with the I7 out now what do i do? I have been buying piece by piece case coolermaster 830 abs 1100w tagan modular psu but have held off once i saw the i7 coming out with buying the motherboard Should i buy the i7 what are the advantages over that board opposed to the 775 boards? I use the comp mainly for music D.J. Business and am debating using it as a home dvr blu ray player/ media center. so primarily home use but occasional music and video playing
Roger,
You are picking a perfect time to go shopping, the prices of RAM in general just dropped through the goddamn floor. 6GB (yes 6!) of nice-ass DDR3 ram is $270 (Newegg).
I couldn’t believe that when I ran across it.
Also I would highly encourage you to look into building the i7 machine. The performance of the Core i7 chips is on average 25% faster across the board than Core 2 was and the 2nd or 3rd from the top fastest quad-core CPUs are pretty damn reasonably priced.
In the past where you got taken to the cleaners with a new platform like i7 was the motherboard and the ram, this time around, RAM is dirt cheap but the motherboards are still a bit more expensive. It’s all a wash in the end.
Say $500 or so for the CPU, $200 for the RAM (4GB), and $300 for the mobo, about $1k for a hell of a machine.
I’d suggest that not because of your use-case (business, DJ, music, movies) but just because it’s such a cheap price tag for an excellent performing machine.
As far as a specific motherboard to get, I no longer have a preference. I used to be a die-hard ASUS fan until my most recent ASUS purchase drove me crazy for months before a firmware fix came out to correct the issue. Now I don’t know if it much matters, I’d probably stick with one of the big-name players, but they are all pretty competitive price-wise.
Let us know what you end up getting.
Good info. Worth reading.
I will soon be building a new core i7 gaming/video editing machine. I have a question though, you said ddr3 takes advantage of this new platform. How is this and would it be a good performance increase from ddr2 800mhz?
I’m very excited as I heard the core i7 helps tremendously for multi-gpu setups.
I’ve also heard of intel releasing a smaller die shink i7 next year so I might wait and hopefully ddr3 prices drop even more. What do you think about that?
Thanks
Tony,
The Core i7 platform was engineered for DDR3, so there is no getting around it there. Fortunately the cost of DDR3 has dropped through the floor, so you can pick up plenty of it for cheap now.
Also Intel always does a “tick-tock” yearly release cycle. More specifically, in 2008 they released a new die and next year they will introduce the shrunken version of it with a few enhancements. The year after that they will introduce a new die, and the year after that, the shrunken version of it.
So yes, if you want to wait until Q42009 for your new machine, you can probably grab the die-shrunk version of the Core i7, which I think will be 32nm.
Yep, Westmere, the 32mn die-shrink of Nehalem will be out Q4 this year.
I just wanted to say “thank you” for this neat little write-up. I was debating while saving up for my next build (oh, the mind-games we play) whether to get 4 gigs of DDR3 or the 8 gigs of DDR2. Your article makes it clear that 8 gigs of DDR2 is both cheaper and a better use of my money.
I would love to just get a Westmere when they come out, but I think the RAM, board, and chip will still be out of my budget. A quick map:
2008, Nehalem, 45nm —>2009, Westmere, 32nm
2010, Sandy Bridge, 32nm —> 2011 —-> Ivy Bridge, 22nm
2012, Haswell, 22nm —-> ?
~Bryan
Bryan,
Thanks for laying it out, didn’t actually know the shrink was coming this year. Might make for some great Christmas shopping!
ive got 4 gig of ddr2 830 in my pc, but its running on 667 speeds, how do i correct this so that it runs on the correct speeds? please someone help!!!
wow thanks heaps! I had heard about this and am building a new pc so.. very helpful info Riyad!
Daniel,
Glad we could help. If you are building a new Core i7-based machine though (highly recommended) you’ll be using DDR3 anyway — and luckily the price has fallen quite a bit after everyone got sued in that Classaction lawsuit pertaining to price-fixing… so DDR3 doesn’t carry the price premium it did back when this article was written.
Hope that helps.
Well If your used to upgrade then wait for DDR3 to become dirt cheap.
Then upgrade from DDR2 to DDR3. Cause by that time the performance difference would be so high that you would start to see the difference without any benchmark.(That’s when 1 shud upgrade, when difference can be seen by your eyes}
Cause whats the point of upgrade to DDR3 when no current processor can saturate the DDR2?
My advice== Go with latest CPU + HIGH Performance Graphic Card+ Shit loads of DDR2 800hz RAM + Minimum 500GB SATA == [for 2 yrs neeed not to upgrade.]
And Please don’t Listen to any1 saying go DDR3 u would be future proof. Cause the guy who use future proof with Computers shudn’t be listened to.
Remember== the motherboard that supports DDR3 now at premium Price will be Dirt cheap by the time DDR3 becomes norm of the day.(And with the same price you would be able to buy Motherboard that would Support DDR4 + Very high speed DDR3(Yes DDR3 is going to get hell a lot faster just like DDR2 did)
So you are not loosing on any front= Performance or Money.
Thx a lot. I was really freak out about getting another motherboard, because I´m going to change my E2180 (2x2GB 800Mhz) to E6850 (2x2GB 800Mhz) and i was having a bottle neck with my Gf8600GT OC 256MB. But i will check it out when i bring the new 8800GT to my config and see with the old and new config (old cpu – new cpu). I hope my CPU or my Memorys dont bottleneck, is all I care about…
The price of DDR3 has fallen drastically over the past few months. The price difference between DDR3 and DDR2 is comparable. You can check it out at site like newegg.com.
No doubt, check out this 6GB bundle of Corsair DDR3 RAM for $100 — insane.
For those of us that don’t want to get an SSD yet and wait for the technology to mature, with Windows 7 (And possibly VIsta to a lesser extent) with the insane amount of cashing the OS provides, 12GB of RAM for $200 should be a really nice middle ground for faster load times.
great article. it was indeed informative and very pleasant to read. though i still feel hesitant to buy a new notebook. i really want it to be future proof. i can’t jump the gun and pick up a quad extreme dell m4400 notebook. it’s listed that it uses ddr2.. would this be a good buy? a rep said she could configure it to be 64bit but could not make it ddr3..
Leo, there is no such thing as “future proof.” It is a misnomer at best. As the saying goes, “Today’s technology is tomorrow’s trash.” I am not trying to be nasty, just pointing out that attempting to buy something that is “future proof” is an exercise in futility. At some point, you just need to buy what is out there, and understand that one day it will be out on the curb.
i do understand that completely :/ though i would like to pick up something that will be relatively competitive in the future market
Leo,
If you want something as “future proof” as you can get in a desktop, get a Core i7-based machine. 920 or so should be fantastic for 3 years or so with 6GB or more of ram (about $100/6gb right now for DDR3 at Newegg).
If you want a “future proof” laptop, that’s a bit harder, because the i7 series chips haven’t been shrunk yet to go into laptops, so you’d be buying last-gen Core 2-based chips.
If you *can* wait, I’d really suggest waiting until next year when Core i7 goes to the mobile platforms along with Windows 7 — I’m not suggesting you have to get Windows 7, I just believe that with the release of W7 later this year, we’ll see a huge push-down in pricing for SSDs in laptops and next year you’d be able to get 4GB+ RAM, SSD and possibly a mobile Core i7-based CPU in a laptop pretty affordibly — that’ll last a long longer for you performance-wise than anything you buy now.
I’m also curious to see how the NVIDIA, AMD and Intel mobile “all in one” platforms pan out in driving down the cost of mobile devices with strong performance characteristics.
You can tell we are “winding down” out of the existing technology stacks and previous-gen hardware because everything is cheap as shit… this usually happens for 6-10 months before new technology stacks drop and dominate the market with the higher-end prices. You can give that time to settle this year and pick something up nice and new Q1 2010 if you can wait.
Great reply riyad! You’re definitely right about future proofing a laptop. I was actually reading about i7 mobile chips possibly being in production by Q4-09.. That’s definitely an incentive to wait for ’10 and go with a quad 64bit w7 ThinkPad (hopefully with xp downgrade-able).
Though today I can get a great deal which I am debating.. Since it’s not quad core or actually utilizes the supported ddr3 as the i7′s do. Specs are:
ThinkPad T500 ($1698 + Warranty)
-T9600 2.8GHz 1066MHz 6MBL2
-Genuine Windows Vista Business 64 & XP restore DVD -15.4 WXGA TFT, w/ LED Backlight
-ATI Mobility Radeon 3650 with 256MB with Intel Advanced Management Technology
-4 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1067MHz SODIMM Memory)
-320 GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm ect++
Such an overwhelming decision.. I could wait to caress a newly built notebook but sighhh! My main use in the notebook will be for audio production (ableton live 8, reason4, native instruments komplete 5). Never really game.. Other than that, movie viewing/visualizers, basic word processing, photoshopping, internetting/streaming, and spread sheet processing on the side.
any more help will be appreciated to the max!
Leo,
Ha! I’ve been watching the same Lenovo coupons — did you see that 20% off one that came out today for the X-series? (I love the X301).
I really do like Lenovos, I’ve had my T60 for about 2.5 years now and it still performs fine for what I use it for.
I don’t know that much about the memory requirements for audio processing, but it looks like that machine would handle that without much of a problem… I’m all hung up on getting a new laptop until I can get a SSD affordibly in one… with a desktop you can just put in so much memory that an SSD isn’t required, with a laptop, it’s the most common bottleneck I”ve run into (software like Java IDEs) — the performance boost in a laptop from an SSD is night and day, I just don’t think that $510 Lenovo wants for the 128gb Samsung is worth it just yet (Especially with it being the new hotness in the computer market).
Do you really need the laptop now, in which case, go for it. That’s a great buy… or do you just really *want* the new laptop now?
I sort of feel like Bryan does — if you need the computer, buy it without much consternation, I’m sure it will work great even if you upgrade it with an SSD next year and throw Windows 7 on it or something.
I really don’t recall a night-and-day difference in performance between Intel platforms when it was actually placed into a new machine (P4 to Core 1, Core 1 to Core 2, etc.), so I don’t think you’ll hate yourself if you get a smoking deal now and just live with it for a few years.
BTW, I think you can save like $400 if you get the 2.53ghz CPU instead of the 2.8 — I haven’t looked in a few weeks, but I thought I remember the price-gap pretty big, if you could get that T500 with a slower CPU and an SSD, I think you’d be happy as a clam.
(but then again, I don’t know anything about audio processing, not such how much that extra 300mhz is helping you)
Leo,
Here’s the coupon I was talking about, 2-days only:
======================================
Lenovo 2 day sale – 20% off Thinkpad X and more, Apr 15
Lenovo offers 15% – 20% off on select notebooks for 4/15 – 4/16 only.
Use eCoupon “USPSTPATSSALE” in cart.
* 20% off ThinkPad X Notebooks
* 20% off ThinkPad X Tablet
* 20% off ThinkPad W Series laptops
* 15% off – ThinkPad T, SL and R Series laptops
* 20% off accessories (monitors excluded)
Again! Thanks for the quick response
I appreciate you showing me the codes so I don’t have to customize my book through the spring deal page. I went to see what kind of price I could get on a w700 and I come to check out and try the code, but it states that it is not valid. Maybe it was automatically applied. I wish they offered the w500 with a quad core.. I would be all over that..
The x301 is a beauty. I do need a lot more power though. Audio processing is very meticulous as latency and CPU load is very crucial. This is why I want to max out my performance. I would rather spend the extra money on the CPU and upgrade to a MLC SSD in the future as prices drop and storage increases!
I sort of WANT and NEED a laptop now.. Haha I guess it’s a little bit of both. My current specs are still stuck in 06..
Gateway Laptop – MX6446 – about 2.5 years old
CPU – AMD Turion 64 MK-36 (single core 1.99gHz)
Ram – 2GB (upgraded)
HDD – 100GB 7200rpm (upgraded) ultra-ata (lol sad)
GPU – ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 (integrated) shared 128 mb
OS – XP Pro 32bit SP3
So sad and so combobulated. I want to be a happy clam, lol
discombobulated**
Leo, I know the feeling. I guess if I were in your shoes I’d go dig up some benchmarks on the AMD MK-36 compared to the Intel T9600 with processor intensive tasks (like WinRAR, video encoding, LAME encoding, etc.) and see if the gap is a 100% or more jump in performance.
That should give you a good feel for what kind of awesome the upgrade will have in store for you or if you should wait for the Core i7 and hobble along a bit longer.
This might sorta help, but then again I don’t know what tests “CPU Mark” runs to determine a score: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+Turion+64+Mobile+MK-36
… Are you really that stupid?
The video encoding doesn’t depend on Ram. It depends mostly on the CPU thus rendering the Ram pretty useless.
Games=Cpu and Gpu Mostly.
Other than that, you are right. DDR3 consumes less power and only has a 10-15% boost
Kevin, I need a mailing address for you so I can send you a giant “I Won at the Internet” trophy I have sitting here for you.
Leo,
Just saw this on Anandtech today, some more information about Intel’s 32nm Core i7 chips that are gonna get a core-bump on desktop and shrunk down for Notebooks.
Riyad, I checked out that “CPU MARK” link for my CPU and compared it to the T9600. T9600 basically tripled the MK-36 score! The QX9300 easily quadrupled my puny Turion.
“CPU tests Mathematical operations, compression, encryption, SSE…”
I will definitely be happy if I bought a T500 with a T9600 or a W700 with a QX9300 today. BUT if I wait longer, I’ll be able to save more money and sport around a 32nm Duo/Quad in a 15″ Lenovo, (hopefully). 17″ is a bit big for my taste and preference.
Also THANKS for the informative link. I’ve found more info on the same topics:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090326PD208.html
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=113156
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Montevina-Plus-Processors-to-Enable-Affordable-Ultraportables-108071.shtml
http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2009/02/intel_westmere_32nm_integrates_graphics_in_the_cpu.html
http://www.intel.com/corporate/pressroom/emea/deu/cebit/pdfs/CeBIT_Client_Tech_Briefing.pdf
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/03/20/intel.2ghz.atom.in.april/
Kevin, seriously, why do you have to be a douche? Can’t you get along and offer positive criticism?
Negativity = Not so helpful.
Positive, Well-Intentioned Advice = Perhaps helpful.
kevin is confused, and there are some points in this article that were not addressed; specifically, the effects of overclocking the cpu.
while it’s true that fast ddr2 provides plenty of bandwidth, it also limits your overclocking ability… with ddr3, if you can get the 1:2 multiplier that you couldn’t get with ddr2, you’ll be able to run the fsb at 500mhz, depending on the cpu… which translates into a substantial increase in cpu frequency, or to put it another way, the ability to encode video and such in a shorter period of time.
i don’t think that anyone can argue with performance gains from a faster cpu… ocz is currently having a ram fire sale: OCZ Gold 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1800 (PC3 14400) Dual Channel Kit for $64 after rebate.
if you are into overclocking, getting ddr3 for ddr2 prices seems like a wise choice to me… the latencies that look slow on paper on not an issue at really high frequencies like that.
Finally some usefull and direct information…
THANK YOU
The specific award winning motherboard that you do not recommend us being used as #1 mainboard by serious overclockers around the world, and is known for it’s stability and robust performance. Assuming u have updated the bios and havent screwed up with anything else, yea like every other manufacturer, your board could be faulty. Asus has the lowest ratio of faults to production when it comes to mainboards, amongst all Mboard manufacturers. Discouraging users from buying Asus mainboards because it happened that u belong in the 0,00000000000000000000000000001% is making u look stupid imho again, having said that the specific board has been an epic stable and overclocable piece of gear.
James,
If you have links to public information to backup your claims, I’ll absolutely retract my statements — if you don’t, I don’t see how that’s any different then my claim to stay away from that single motherboard.
I also think you meant this for my ASUS-rant post, and not this post. I have a few other data points from friends who had similar upgrade woes with their ASUS boards, but that’s as useless as your percentage… so I chose not to include it.
Let me know when you have that research information handy so I can read it.
solved my dilema, thanks
actually….ddr3 1333 is equivalent to ddr2 667. it’s like comparing ddr2 667 to ddr2 800…except the ddr2 667(aka ddr3 1333) performs basically the same as the ddr2 800. considering it performs as well as ddr2 800…if you compared ddr2 667 to ddr3 1333 you would see that the ddr3 wins hand down. the more data you can push at a single time is important, especially since we have processors strong enough to handle all of that data at once now without choking on it. ddr ram sent a little bit of data over a reasonably short period of time. ddr2 pushes double the data at a single time, but takes about twice as long to do it. ddr3 moves data at about 3x the size of ddr1 and also takes 3x as long. so they’re all essentially delivering at the same rates.
ddr3′s only real change over ddr2 is the power consumption. it’s cut by %30 which means it runs cooler and is more stable.
Truth,
You’re absolutely right — the bandwidth of DDR3 is much higher than DD2 — this post was written a while ago and for anyone building a performance PC today based on the Core i7 platform, DDR3 is absolutely the way to go — especially after the massive price drop.
We are hititng the limit with SATA2 with SSD’s. SATA2 is capped at 3Gb/s not 3GB/s as you stated.
i7′s are still quite pricey…although they do deliver better performance than AMD…but AMD has them beat in pricing. And there are plenty of scenarios where cheaper AMD products perform about the same. For the price of an i7 cpu alone, I instead built an ENTIRE x3 720 machine. That includes the case, power supply, an AM3 mobo, the CPU, and ddr3 1333. Just threw the CD/HD from my old one into the rig and it was good to go.
Many of the i7 massive performance increases over AMD are seen in synthetic benchmarks only, and not in real world scenarios. It’s like the i7 was MADE to specifically max out synthetic benchmarks, which are unrealistic. even if it had 2x the performance it still doesn’t justify itself since it costs more than 2x the price.
That was a good detailed peace of info. My personal experience revield that a DDR2 800 was faster when I was working with my dell and a friends hp laptops. Both have the same system spec but the ram. One is 4gb ddr2 and one 2gb ddr 3 and that proved to me that more ram can be better than fater ram in many cases.
Mans,
You’d have to run micro-benchmarks on those two machines to drill down and compare the ram speed… it’s just such an unscientific way to compare the speed of RAM. I really wouldn’t bank on that example.
DDR2 has lower latency than DDR3, but DDR3 has much more bandwidth — so it depends on what you are doing, DDR2 will be faster in some cases (like mathematical operations) and DDR3 will be faster in others (like gaming where GB worth of textures are paged in and out of ram).
Doesn’t really matter anymore though, all recent CPU releases are based on DDR3-platforms.
Ram prices have skyrocketed across the board in the past month. It’s def not a good time to get neither DDR3 or DDR2 ram right now especially if you are on a budget, atleast not until the ram price go back down again.
You can thank Windows 7 and the holiday shopping season for that one.
@Mans Mov
what you’re saying goes against common knowledge. DDR3 is faster than DDR2, always. for example, DDR3 1333 is really only DDR3 667 with a different name, and will always give higher performance than DDR2 800.
Another incorrect statement is that your 4gb of DDR2 is faster than 2GB of DDR3. this again, goes against common knowledge. 4 sticks of any type of RAM will deliver slightly worse performance than 2 sticks of the same kind.
Unganged Dual Mode DDR3 1333 CAS 9 CR1 (aka ddr667)
Memory Read: 8253 MB/s
Memory Write: 6612 MB/s
Memory Copy: 9676 MB/s
Memory Latency: 54.6
And this is just one of the cheapest DDR3 modules. Others come in CAS 8, 7, and 5.
In everest, there are maybe 1 or 2 DDR2 800, setups that get go over those numbers…and they have a cas of 4, which is less than half the cas of the ddr3.
So in essence, the lowest end DDR3 will be faster than most DDR2, and probably cost half the price or less along with using 30% power hence 30% less heat, hence higher overclocks. You can even bump ddr3 up a whole .4 volts before it will fry.
here’s one results, on a phenom II x3 720 with ddr3 1333 at cas 9, the write speed is 6611MB/s. The second machine is using a phenom II x4 940, with ddr2-800 ram cas 5, the write speed is 5915MB/s. so even with double the cas and unmatched mhz for mhz, the ddr3 still outperforms the ddr2. now imagine that ddr3 1333 module with a cas of 5 or 7, which is readily available.
DDR3 outperforms DDR2 in all areas, the only thing we need is the prices for the lower latency models to come down. but even budget models will outperform ddr2.
truth thanks for taking the time to post those numbers — helps quantify some of the discussion here. Our of curiosity, are these SANDRA numbers? How were these achieved incase anyone else wants to benchmark?
I stated that these were taken in everest ultimate latest version.
to be honest, these numbers for ddr3 1333 aren’t amazing, but that’s because of the CAS and brand…this is literally from the cheapest sticks newegg has to offer in ddr3.
for example:
WINTEC AMPX 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model 3AXT6400C5-2048K – Retail
that package costs $40…the rest of the listings of the same type and cas cost around 50$, so I’m just going to round it up to $50 for 2x1GB of DDR2-800.
Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory w/ LEDs Model BL2KIT12864TG1337 – Retail
this isn’t the cheapest model of DDR3, it costs around $57..the cheapest costs $50 but has a cas9 instead of a cas7 like this one.
now just think about it, cas5 ddr2 800 for $40-$50……or cas 9 – cas7 ddr3 1333 for $50-$60. considering cas 9 ddr3 1333 outperforms most cas 5 ddr2 800, cas 7 will provide even more performance…I’m going to do a rough guesstimate and say cas 7 will be around a 15% boost in memory speed/bandwidth over cas 9. most people won’t need that performance boost and most won’t even notice the difference between cas 9 or cas 7, but it’s available and doesn’t cost much more…and fully worth it if you want it for only dollars more.
now with cas 5 ddr3 1333, you can expect these numbers to almost double over cas 9.
so far i’ve shown the performance AND cost ratio’s of ddr2 vs ddr3, and their variances in cas.
I’d like to note that I reran bandwidth tests in sandra instead of everest and I’m getting very high readings, over 12000MB/s…
i’d like to also add this article was written in early 2008, it’s almost 2010 now…drr3 prices have dropped to pretty much match ddr2.
It’s just a bad time to build a pc. With skyrocketing DRAM prices and USB 3.0 and SATA III to debute on all AMD and Intel platforms and devices soon. It’s better off to wait a good 6 months to build a pc before DRAM prices go back down and USB 3.0 and SATA III platforms and devices to start to become widely available.
ram prices have gone back down, ddr2 and ddr3 are almost the same price, with maybe a 5-10$ difference between the two in pricing. I’ve even seen performance ddr2 costing around $80, that can be beaten by $40 ddr3.
It’s actually a perfect time to build a PC, with AMD’s Phenom II series, and intels i5/i7 series, you’re sure to have a solid PC that will last a few years, probably 3 before an entirely new system is needed. We also now have relatively cheap DDR3, and ATI’s new GFX card lineup will be dropping in price soon…nvidia doesn’t have anything new out, but still has cards on par with ati’s. this would all be ‘this year’ tech.
For those on a budget and in no need of getting a new PC right away, you can just wait 6 months for the prices to drop even further. but even those on a budget can build a solid future proof gaming PC from scratch for around $450 from the ground up if they build it themselves and go with AMD/ATI…and intel solution would only be that low with a crappy gfx card. if you aren’t willing to spend that much on a PC, then ddr3 should be the least of your worries because DDR3 requires a new system anyways.
DDR3 is here, it is widely available. It’s just that it doesn’t run on AM2 mobo’s or any earlier intels than the i series….so obviously no one who bought the last generation of computers are going to be buying ddr3. many am2 users may upgrade their processors and keep their ddr2….especially if they have pricey erformance ddr2.
but anyone buying a new system today and beyond without ddr3 would be foolish.
Well from all I’ve seen 4gb of DDR3 1333 for example is still going for 90+ dollars on avg and from what I read due to the ongoing shortages coming out from Twain and the bad global economy there really isn’t going to be a drastic price drop of DRAM for a while at least for the next 6 months or so according to Maximum PC.
If you’re really not in need of buying or building a pc right now then you’re just better off waiting a good 6 months for USB 3.0 and SATA III then, because by then the market will start to have those standards becoming widely available. It wouldn’t make much sense to build a system now unless you really have to, just to turn around and buy a new motherboard along with upgrading your devices to other devices that are equipped with those features 6 months from now. Not to mention by then devices for those standards will start becoming more widely available.
Well I just bought a hp pavilion p6130f brand new off of eBay for 400 bucks total. I’d wouldn’t call that foolish by any means, but instead a hell of a deal for what I got for it. It comes with a Phenom x4 9750, 8gb of DDR2, 750gb hard drive, Wireless N, 15-1 memory card reader, DVD-RW drive and Windows 7. I couldn’t have came close building the same pc with those specs for that price. It would have ended up costing me well over 600 dollars and this pc will be plenty fine for me well into the future for what I need it to do.
DDR2 will still have 50-60% of the DRAM market in 2010. So DDR2 is not going to go away just yet. Vendors will still be equiping many of their pc’s with DDR2 well into next year. Mobile platforms aren’t expected to make a full transition to DDR3 until sometime in 2011. AMD’s newest mobile platform is still being equpied with DDR2 and so is Intels ultra mobile platforms as well. Forcasters predict that DDR3 won’t take a total grip on the pc market until sometime in the second half of 2011.
What’s nice about having an AM2+ system is you won’t be in the dark. While Intel is set to totally abandon the LGA 775 platform, AMD just announced recently that both AM2+ and AM3 platforms will support their new up and coming Hexa-Core Thuban CPU, which will add even great life to the AM2+ DDR2 platform.
What’s foolish is buying or building a pc that comes with low grade DDR3 ram. I see many namebrand pc’s come with DDR3 1066 now. By the time you upgrade to a better processor you will basically have to upgrade to a higher speed ram as well with those types of low speed DDR3 ram installed, because processors in the future when they get better equipped to handle higher bandwith speeds will start to bottleneck off the low bandwith DRR3 ram speeds. So you would be having to basically buy new ram all over again, which wouldn’t make any sense. Not to mention the performance diff between DDR3 1066 and DDR2 1066 or even DDR2 800 is slim at best and DDR3 800 makes no sense what so ever.
People with LGA 775 systems can upgrade to DDR3 Ram by buying a DDR3 LGA 775 P35 or higher chipset that’s equipped with DDR3 modules, but it’s really pointless considering none of the LGA 775 processors can’t real advantage of the higher clock rate speeds of DDR3 ram.
first off, let me say you got royally screwed on the phenom x4. the phenom II is WAY better in every way. my $120 Phenom II x3 puts out a deal more performance than it, and even more than the phenom II x4 in some cases.
ask yourself…do you really need 8gb of RAM? probably not, especially considering you bought an old phenom like that.
waiting to buy a machine, just to wait for USB 3 and SATA 3, would be foolish. SATA III isn’t going to make current hard drives get much more performance because it’s chalked up to what the drive can physically handle.
a 15 in 1 memory reader costs around $20 on newegg…not really a pricey part. 750gb hard drives can be had for about $50…1TB for $80-100 even…and RPM is what matters, not SATA II/III. DVDRW drives can be had for as low as $20-50…hell I still have a DVDRW I bought from 2001, and it suits me just fine. DVDRW speeds haven’t changed much since then.
right now, I could probably go on newegg, and rebuild your entire system for cheaper than you paid for it used. that’s something to seriously take into consideration when realizing the deal you’ve gotten. you’re ‘upgraded’ system, would be a downgrade for me. you basically bought yesteryear tech for todays prices.
what you don’t get is even the cheapest highest CAS DDR3 is just as fast or faster than even the lowest cas DDR2. not only that, DDR3 1333 is really only DDR3 667. so in essence, DDR3 667 outperforms DDR2 800. we’re talking 9 cas ddr3 vs cas 4-5 ddr2. ddr3 667 comes in at 5-7 cas now (at only 5-10$ more than the 9 cas)…so imagine what it’s like then if it beats DDR2 with a 9 cas. you can almost double the performance numbers with a cas of ddr3 that low.
I can build a PC more powerful than the one you bought, for ~$300, today. max you’d get is 4gb of RAM though….but NO ONE needs 8GB unless they’re running a massive server, or need it for work…but if you needed it for work I would think you wouldn’t have gone with the old phenom series, so I’m gonna guess that this is just a regular home PC. and if it is a regular home PC, even a gaming PC…max RAM needed would not pass 4GB. most home PC’s don’t even need more than 2GB.
the only thing the PC wouldn’t include under the price though, is a video card (unless you don’t care about onboard), a hard drive, or a dvd drive. personally, I always swap my drives into my new systems to save money on new builds. I’m still running a 7200rpm 80gb from 2000. and I swapped my videocard from my old machine to my new one, which saw a great performance increase even though I plan on replacing it soon.
what’s sad, is you don’t realize that the guy who sold that system to you, probably took that money you gave him and went out and bought/built a better PC for the same price.
you talk about upgrade wisdom, but I see none. when you upgraded, you upgraded to last years old tech, and paid more than or just as much as you would have paid for this years new and faster tech. you’re telling people to wait on USB-SATA 3 before upgrading even though these are mostly minor features (and you could probably get a USB 3 drive later), and you’re telling people that DDR3 is too expensive when it’s just as expensive as DDR2 now, and the lowest end DDR3 performs better than most of the highest end DDR2. anyone upgrading this year, will have a good solid PC for at least the next 2 years, maybe 3.
How did I roaylly screw myself, the whole pc was 400 bucks! The Phenom X4 9750 does everything I need it to do and then some. Furthermore That triple core may outperform the Phenom X4 9750 when it comes to speed obv and anything else that doesn’t take advantage of quad cores, but when it comes to quad core support the Phenom X4 has the advantage over the triple core hands down when dealing with software that can take advantage of four cores.
Again the pc came with 8gb of ram and again the pc was only 400 bucks. Furthermore it doesn’t matter if it’s the older Phenom X4 or not that really has nothing to do with software apps or any other multipile software you run that will take advantage of large amounts of ram.
Why would you not wait for the lastest standards? Are you saying USB 3.0 is foolish to wait on? Have you not seen what USB 3.0 is capable of performing over USB 2.0 when it deals with movings large amounts of files. SATA III may not make sense with SATA spindle hard drives since SATA spindle hard drives haven’t even reached SATA II speeds let alone SATA III speeds, but for SSD’s hard drives that’s another story. SSD hard drives are really close to hitting their limits on SATA II where SATA III will be needed and considering SSD hard drives are becoming cheaper and cheaper and will start to replace SATA spindle hard drives in a couple of years, you will need SATA III for that very reason.
Um no you couldn’t. Phenom X4 9750 processor which is 100 bucks, 750gb Barracuda hard drive which is 79 bucks, 8gb of DDR2 800 which was 198 bucks, 15- memory card reader 15 bucks motherboard 70 bucks DVD-RW 25 bucks, Windows 7 OS 100 bucks, Mouse and keyboard prob 20 bucks Case prob 30 bucks, Power Supply prob 25 bucks. All of those parts total minus shipping cost would run roughly 630 to 640 dolalrs total. If you are talking building roughly exactly the same parts that’s how much it would end up costing, and i’m talking parts off of newegg prices. futhermore what’s yesteryear about it DDR2 and Phenom X4? So I mean aren’t you the one that said you don’t need USB 3.0 and SATA III, but yet a generation standards that are behind on my pc is yesteryear? That’s hypocrtical.
PC’s don’t need even more then 2gb of ram? Yeah maybe if you were running Windows 32bit, but clearly Windows 64bit does need 4gb of ram for optimal performance. And more and more programs are showing that they are capping over the 2gb limit now. Photoshop is a prime example of that.
“The 8GB/64-bit advantage”
“Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
“The system with 8GB of RAM got the image processing done two and a half times faster than the system with 2GB of RAM. Even between 4GB and 8GB, it’s clear that running Photoshop with more RAM is advantageous.”
And again, you are acting like as if I bought an additonal 4gb of ram ram ontop of buying this computer, it came with 8gb of ram for 400 bucks! It doesn’t matter if I will ever need that much ram or not, it came with it. Why would I buy a brand new system with half that amount of ram or less for the same price as other oferings in that price range that have lower specs, when I can get 8gb of ram for the same price. That would be like buying an item and getting the second item for free and not getting the second item even though it was free with the first items purchase.
Um I do knew who I bought it from they were a liquidation online retail site, So you are wrong. What’s sad is you’re dislousional to think that you could build a better computer with all that mine came with for 400 bucks, when clearly I showed that you couldn’t even with the same specs.
Uh no. For starters I already provided facts showing that evne with the specs I had would have costed me over 200 dolalrs more for everything I got on this pc, let alone the newer technology. Second of all I was implying for anyone waiting on the new standards that are better off waiting until those standards are out to build a pc. Not to mention buy then DRAM prices should be lower then they are now, So obv that’s the logical option. You’re making a hipcortical statement once again. You say I upgraded to last years old tech, but yet you say to tell people not to wait for USB 3.0 and SATA III and buy old tech now. Yet you say I have no upgrade wisdom? LOL.
Um now it doesn’t. DDR3 800 doesn’t not perform better then DDR2 1066 or even DDR2 800 with lower Cas latency’s. Anatech’s DDR3 vs DDR2 ram article proved that.
I’ll go ahead and prove my point. These are newegg prices…
AM3 budget system roughly around the same specs as my AM2+ system.
COOLER MASTER Elite 330 RC-330-KKN1-GP Black SECC ATX Mid Tower Computer Case – Retail 39.99
MSI 785GM-E65 AM3 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard – Retail $89.99
Rosewill RV350 350W ATX 1.3 Power Supply – Retail $24.99
AMD Athlon II X4 620 Propus 2.6GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Processor – Retail %99
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-10600CL9D-4GBNT – Retail $91.99
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-10600CL9D-4GBNT – Retail $91.99
Total 8gb of ram.
SUPER TALENT INTAIN1MCR All-in-one Card Reader – Retail $9.99
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3750528AS 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $79.99
LITE-ON 22X DVD±R DVD Burner Black E-IDE/ATAPI Model iHAP222-06 LightScribe Support – OEM $28.99
Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 B2L-00047 Black 105 Normal Keys 9 Function Keys USB Ergonomic Keyboard and Mouse – OEM $21.99
Windows 7 64bit Home Premuim Edition OEM $100
$678.91 + shipping $35.50 = $714.41 total.
A diff of $314.41 from what I paid for mine brand new pc with free shipping.
Now we will do an AM2+ budget system roughly around the same specs as my AM2+ system.
COOLER MASTER Elite 330 RC-330-KKN1-GP Black SECC ATX Mid Tower Computer Case – Retail 39.99
MSI 785GM-E65 AM2/AM2+/AM3 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard – Retail $89.99
Rosewill RV350 350W ATX 1.3 Power Supply – Retail $24.99
AMD Phenom X4 9750 Agena 2.4GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Processor Model HD9750XAJ4BGH – OEM Retail $99
GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Quad Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model GB28GB6400C5QC – Retail $199.94
Total 8gb of ram.
SUPER TALENT INTAIN1MCR All-in-one Card Reader – Retail $9.99
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3750528AS 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5? Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $79.99
LITE-ON 22X DVD±R DVD Burner Black E-IDE/ATAPI Model iHAP222-06 LightScribe Support – OEM $28.99
Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 B2L-00047 Black 105 Normal Keys 9 Function Keys USB Ergonomic Keyboard and Mouse – OEM $21.99
Windows 7 64bit Home Premuim Edition OEM $100
$678.91 + shipping $35.50 = $730.37 total
A diff of $330.37 from what I paid for mine brand new pc with free shipping.
Regardiny my last post on the AM2+ system the total would come to $694.87 not $678.91, the $678.91 was for the AM3 budget system.
$694.87 + shipping $35.50 = $730.37 total
A diff of $330.37 from what I paid for mine brand new pc with free shipping.
And those two bduget systems that I showed above is the point that I was trying to make about how it would have cost me a lot more to build a complete system on either the AM2+ or AM3 platform then to buy the system I got for $400 dollars off of ebay brand new, which saved me over $310 dollars or more on either built system.
I also forgot to mention the wireless N card so you can add another 35 dollars onto both prices as well.
EDIMAX EW-7728In 32bit PCI Wireless 802.11n Draft 2.0 PCI Card – Retail 34.99
SteelCity1981 is right, he got a great deal on his pc, and like he showed, you couldn’t have built a better pc for that price, not with what it comes with. If you are in the market for a budget pc you are much better off buying a naebrand pc then Building one yourself, because you can save a lot of money over trying to build it. You can buy a brand new budget pc that comes with everything but a monitor for as low as $289. Windows OS alone would cost you 100 dollars if you tried to build a pc yourself. But obv if you are a gamer then building your pc will save you a bundle over buying a namebrand gaming pc. so it all depends upon what you are going to use your pc for.
Truth, what is your problem? All SteelCity1981 said he got a great deal on his computer and you just all of a sudden attacked him for it. So who cares if you don’t have the latest and greatest, you get what you need and not what’s out there. I mean, you want to talk about peoples pc’s being outdated, well guess what so is yours. My Core I7 955 crushes your Phenom II X3 processor, but i’m not going to sit their and act like an ass about it saying how much my processor will mop the floor with yours.
Truth are you that clueless? You sit there and tell people that they shouldn’t wait until USB 3.0 and SATA III to come out and build a new computer around that. What kind of idiotic advise is that? Why on earth would you build a new system right now knowing that the new standards are just around the corner? That’s just horrible advise. What I find funny is that you will sit their and say people that build or buy DDR2 systems right now would be foolish to do so, but yet it’s ok to go ahead and build a new system with old standards that are about to be replaced? That makes no sense what so ever. You should think about changing your name from “Truth” to “clueless”, because givng out bad advise like that is clueless to say the least.
^^^^^ Yeah I know right. Truth was prob one of those brainwashed guys that get sucked into mindless marketing BS. Much like a Microsoft fanboy boy gets sucked into everything Microsoft says.
I guess the truth hurts for truth lol. Word of advise truth, get your head out of you know where and quit being one.
Okay, folks; my Inbox just filled with a whole lot of e-mails advising me of updates to this blog which were really just a bunch of guys arguing. Can we get back to the regularly scheduled program?
~Bryan M.
i was thinking the same thing, this is a ram thread…however, I should be able to defend myself against these vultures…
first off, I don’t think there is a core i7 955.
Second, unless his old machine had a malfunctioning hard drive, he needed a new keyboard, needed a new DVD drive, those are useless extra’s. had he kept his old drive and still useful peripherals, he could have just went for a case/psu/mobo/proc/ram. $100 for proc, $40 for case, $80 for 4gb of DDR2 800 cas 5, and lets say another $35 for psu, and $50 for a mobo. that is roughly $305 brand new. almost a full 25% cheaper, if he had kept his old hard drive, keyboard, and didn’t worry about having 8GB of RAM rather than 4GB. even if he sold 4GB of the ram, it would still bring him almost $40 over my price. replacing something useful you already have doesn’t constitute a ‘deal’.
I was pointing out the irony that he just upgraded to yesteryear tech, but telling everyone else not to upgrade to the new stuff until SATA 3/USB 3 (6 months from now). yet you can have this years tech which is better, faster…for as much as he payed or less. so in essence, he upgraded a little over 6 months before the release of USB 3 AND SATA III (which he wants to get), yet he’s telling everyone else not to. pot calling the kettle. The entire argument can end right there simply because of this fact.
I was also pointing out that the phenom II has serious improvements over the phenom I..not just in design, but in performance. I wasn’t going out of my way to make my x3 720 appear superior to his. I was just showing the fact that the phenom II x3 can beat the phenom I x4, and in some areas beats the phenom II x4.
“What I find funny is that you will sit their and say people that build or buy DDR2 systems right now would be foolish to do so, but yet it’s ok to go ahead and build a new system with old standards that are about to be replaced?”
sata III will double the speeds of sata II, but how many people need that extra speed? i probably shouldn’t be asking that one guy because he’s got at least 4gb of RAM sitting empty 24/7. even the fastest mechanical hard drives of today can’t fully saturate sata I speeds. so obviously, for sata III you’ll need an SSD…and it won’t be cheap either.
The only people that need SATA III are people who need double the transfer rate of SATA II, and need it now for business purposes…or just have money to throw at whatever they want just cause. for a home user to jump on the bandwagon right when it comes out, would be pricey. you’d be better off telling them to wait 6 months after the release before buying…which would be a full year from now by your estimates. if someone needs to upgrade now, do you think that PC will do them for another year?
obviously the same will be for usb 3.0, you’ll need a usb 3.0 drive to get your moneys worth out of it. usb 3 would bottleneck the sata III, and would fully saturate the 300mb/s of sata II (so see you CAN have your usb3 and sata II..and eat it too!
.
all this for what? @300mb/s a 4gb file would take approx. 13 seconds to transfer on sata II. so a sata III could possibly transfer that file at around 6.5 seconds. does that 6.5 seconds extra really matter? to transfer ten 4gb files would take you a little over 60 seconds longer on sata II.
even with sata III 2x as fast, that doesn’t automatically mean 2x entire system performance, it will just mean that it loads into RAM 2x faster…ram is where the workload is manipulated, transferring at several GB/s or more. say you’re opening a 300mb program on a sata II ssd, wow…it took you a whole 1 second to transfer that data to ram…now open that same file on a sata III, and wow it took you a whole unnoticeable .5 seconds less time. again, unless you’re needing to transfer 100′s of GB’s of data daily on a time schedule or to increase productivity out of need, these things aren’t economical nor especially significant. and unless you’re buying something larger than 16 or 32 GB, you’re not going to be transferring too many large files to and from the drive. max a 16GB might hold is an OS, some programs, and a newer game with a bit to spare.
not all SSD’s are the same either, many SATA II ssd’s can’t even fully saturate the sata II bandwidth….even the very pricey high end ones. you’d be better off getting a sata II ssd than a sata III ssd, because the sata II ssd’s would have dropped down in price because of the new sata III. so if you bought now, you’re still covered for sata II ssd’s. anything sata III and capable of coming close to saturating it will come at a hefty price. many sata III’s ssd’s will still have maximum peak performance that could only saturate a sata II, so you’ll have to run 2 raid ssd’s to get the full performance of sata III. quite a pricey demand.
your entire argument rests on the assumption that most people WILL be moving to SSD in 6 months from now (because there is no other reason to want sata III) and will want to pay the premium for an SSD sata3…I don’t see this happening.
future proofing is all fine and good, but if they’re gonna future proof they might as well wait until something has been released for a while for prices to drop. which is why sata II ssd will be much more attractively priced.
so sata III, not so much of a selling point when you really delve into it, usb 3.0 = the same.
Oh i’m sorry you call us vultures but yet you act like a complete ass in your comments.
Yes and little did you fail to understand that I said people waiting for those standards should wait. I think I clearly pointed that out.
Oh I see now it goes from I can build a pc for the same price that’s better, to well if he already had exisiting parts I could. LOL. Well gee so could have I, if I had a vast majority of my parts from another pc transferred over to a new build, but that wasn’t what you were referring to. You simply stated that you could build a better pc for the same price and I clearly showed, that you couldn’t even come near that price building a new pc from the ground up.
It’s called replacing an existing computer that the vast majority of parts wasn’t highly comaptible with the new system I got.
Where did I imply i wanted to get USB 3.0 or SATA III? Nowhere, you’re just making crap up now. If I wanted really needed to get USB 3.0 or SATA III, I would have waited. If I needed to really get DDR3 or a Phenom II X4 for a resonable price, I would have waited. So where are you coming up with this I wanted to get USB 3.0 or SATA III garbage from?
Serious improvments? It still uses the K-10x core logic. Yeah it has a larger cache and faster speeds thanks to the evolution of nm technology, but that’s basicly the bulk of the improvments to it. If you compare clock for clock speeds it only holds about a 10% overall improvment over the olde Phenoms and that’s not me saying this, that’s Xtreme Tech saying that. You sit there acting like the the Phenom II is what the Core 2 Duo logic is to the old Pentuim 4′s core logic.
You are talking about the fastest spindle hard drives, which everyone that stays up with computer tech already knows. We are talking about SSD hard drives and how important SATA III will be for SSD’s in the next couple of years, considering SSD’s have already reached their limits on SATA II standards.
How many people need SATA III? I can think of one category of people that would love to have it right now. Let me see gamers which there are a lot of, that could take advantage of those high rate of speeds especially with major games like Crysis, which seems to be very popular amongest the gaming commuinty.
Of course it does, If you are moving large files the less time the better. An extra 6 seconds starts adding up really fast especially if you run a business where time really plays apart in your production.
Your logic isn’t making much sense so according newer standards aren’t importent, but yet you will praise about DDR3 over DDR2, but yet say certain standards won’t be utlize by the avg consumor. Ok Genuis, how many avg computer users then are going wow I can save an extra 10ns of a few seconds by going from DDR2 to DDR3. I mean seriously, How many avg pc users even know the diff from even going from DDR1 to DDR3 in speed. So you say one thing isn’t important but yet you praise something else and how everyone should go get it now, because that’s where the standards are going, but yet say no one needs the new standards of something else. LOL that’s highly hypocrtical.
Um where did I say that everyone will be moving to SSD’s 6 months from now? Do you just like to make things up? I said within the next couple years people will be moving towards SSD’s.
Nothing is future proof in the world of technolgy.
But the fact still remains that USB 3.0 will be the most popular standard that everyone will be able to take real advantage of. You do releaize a lot of people store a lot of things on many popular exnternal devices from movies to music and USB 3.0 will be greatly needed over USB 2.0 to cut the time in half of trnasfering large files and that, everyone can see.
You talk all of this crap but yet you run a Phenom II X3 and talk about standards? LOL In case you didn’t notice the bulk of new software are quad core enabled not triple core. Someone buy this man a freaking clue of common sense. OBTW my Core 2 Quad Q9550, will eat your Phenom II X3 up for lunch and it runs on DDR2!
Don’t talk down to people as if you know what you are really talking about because you just make stupid contradictions.
Go back to yourself importance world that you live on and leave reality back to people that actually live it That don’t make stupid contradictions.
I meant Core i7 950. Never the less you still don’t have a valid point of any kind to sit there and compare processors, that really had nothing to do with anything about the pc offer he got.
So you just took it upon your own assumption without asking why he bought that pc? You know a lot of people normally keep their pc’s for a long time and by the time they do upgrade their hardware parts on their old system are not comaptbile with the new system they buy. I know this may come to a shock to you but many people don’t build another pc same within the same generation. Go look at the vast majority of consumors they noramlly buy a new pc every 3 to 4 years or longer and by the time they get a new pc many of their old pc parts are deemed not upgradable to put in their new pc, because they are simply too old and not comaptible.
That’s all good and well but you were comparing the smae parts that you could build for either with better technology or the same technology for less and he showed you that you couldn’t. furthermore you forgot about the OS that’s another 100 dollars So that brings your cost to 405 dollars. Lets leave off the extra 4gb of ram he got, and lets add the media card reader the wirless N card that he said that was included, so you are already up to $440 minus the extra 8g of ram add the extra 8gb of ram and that would have came to $560 according to your specs and the aditonal features that you missed or set aside that came with his pc. so even after all that and the left over parts that he had he could transfer over for say like the hard drive. It still would have came to 160 dollars to mathc the same specs that he got for 400 dollars. That not only constitute a ‘deal’ as you would put it but a savings of over 160 dollars. So your logic on that still falls short of the savings he got for his pc and it seems to me that i’m not the only poster that links your logic is a little off base when it comes to what I just mentioned above.
It’s a ram thread and you should be able to protect yourself? You were the one that went off the subject by going after SteelCity’s purchase. So why are you acting like you are the innocent party here????
Is the Asus G71GX-7T029Z laptop at £1450 (rughly $2K) and the belo spec the fastest and cheapest laptop vaialble. I know priced in UK are a lot more than US, but the competng Alienware laptop from Dell is a £1000 more for the similar config…any thoghts
Intel® Quad Core Processor Q9000 (2.00 GHz)
SATA HDD 1TB (500 x 2) ( 5400 RPM)
17″ (WUXGA) Colour Shine ( 1920 x 1200)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M, 1GB dedicated graphics memory,
6104 Mb DDR 800 MHz (2048 x 3)
Blu-Ray Combo
Video Camera built-in (1.3 million pixels)
In-Built Bluetooth
64bit Windows 7 Ultimate
Riyad,
thanks for posting your article, and linking it to proven independent data with modern hardware, tested in a very detailed format. I myself didn’t think the DDR2 vs. DDR3 hype was worth much, nor the difference in timing. (As we find out now, 3-channel DDR3 was hype and Intel’s next round of motherboards for USB3 and SATA6gb support went back to dual channel).
I am all about getting the best bang for the buck. That includes the best performance, per watt used (and heat generated), per dollar. Overclocked or stock.
Intel was recently slammed for cheating on the futuremark tests. they encoded data so the CPUs recognized when performance testing software executables were being launched, and then the CPUs changed the way they operated, to “boost” results that the software interpreted. That sucks because it makes Futuremark tests “unreliable”. google it and you will see articles on the topic.
In conclusion, y’all that were spamming each other took away from the article. there is no best system out there…only the best system for what you need and how much you spent. if you are happy with it, then good. if not, then farm it out to someone and get something else.
Currently, I found a great mix of parts that OC’d to stock AMD 965 numbers on air, for only $270 (as of 12-30-09). They are Asus M3N72-D motherboard. AMD Athlon x4 620 quad-core CPU. Corsair XMS2 Pro 4GB DDR2-800 (tw2x4g6400c5pro). Everything was on sale after Xmas for just under $270…and it is fast. very fast in Windows 7. I’m happy.
Here is another little hit for all people looking for a great deal.
buy a:
AMD Phenom II X2 545 Dual Core Processor.
or
AMD Phenom II X2 550 Dual Core Processor.
A lot of people don’t know this but its actually a Quad core with just 2 cores shut off!
so all you have to do is download “AMD Overdrive” and unlock the other cores!
Look it up on Google. Be sure to do a lot of research be for your take this step. Also make sure your MoBo can support the processor.
HI,
I’m buying a new laptop soon, and i was wondering, what do you think would be a better buy? 6GB of DDR2 or 4GB of DDR3 in a gaming laptop with a dual core processor and a beefy graphics card? I really enjoyed your article.
drummerboy__1, I don’t know how beefy you mean, but if you are talking latest mobile GFX chipset and like $2300 or more for the laptop, the DDR3 is going to serve you better for the gaming *most likely*.
This article is quite old at this point, and the cost of DDR3 dropped quite a bit, then Windows 7 came out, drove the price back up and I’m not sure where it lies now.
Get the 4GB of DDR3 but make sure to get it in a stick configuration that you can add to later, for example, 1 stick of 4GB, so maybe in 6 months you can add another stick to your setup by buying it from newegg.com or something — then you’ll have the best of all worlds.
Happy gaming!
hello dear,
seems u hav done a great research work. i m a novice to this computer line.
i want purchase a new computer having best game compatibility. can u just guide me out with that, it would of great help.
gourab,
I’ll assume you are talking about a desktop computer, in which case the Core i7-920 (newegg link) is still one of the favorites out there for “best bang for the buck” chips — if you want to save a bit more money and not drop that much performance, the Core i5-750 (newegg link) is also an excellent choices.
Those are both going to run on DDR3 platforms, get ATLEAST 4 GB of ram, preferably 6GB even if you are on a budget. If you aren’t on a budget, I am not seeing that big of a performance jump in Windows 7 beyond 8GB, so 6GB is a really solid “best bang for buck” number again.
As for video card, the NVIDIA GTX 285 is still outperforming the newest ATI’s at the highest resolutions (2560+), but the ATI is cheaper and does a hair better on lower res’s, so unless you have a 30″ monitor it’s a pretty fair draw. I tend to prefer NVIDIA — their DX11 part is also going to hit market very soon (this month or next) so you might wait for that to decide if you want to spring for it OR just let it push the price of last-gen stuff down a bit.
Now, all that being said, if you are on a REALLY TIGHT budget, a complete AMD/ATI system can give you some really solid performance for cheap. But you are giving up about 15% performance below comparable Intel chips for it (example, Phenom II X4-940).
I’ve done enough digging through benchmarks that I would just go with the Intel i5-750 and not go to an AMD, but it’s really up to you. I used to be a big AMD fanboy back in the Athlon hay-day, but the performance gap at comparable price/GHZ is too heavily in Intel’s favor right now for me to be too interested in AMD for a gaming machine.
pardon ma mistakes as i said i m a novice plz help me out.
For case, the size of your download Software Package can vary, thus influencing the entire process. You may also think about your type of connection when you try to download Software Program. Still the overall speed of your cyberspace provider bottom affect your download, but you behind remain assured that the website will provide you with quality Software Program. This quality is not potential to be affected by the download process.
Riyad, I’m going to have to call you out on the gtx 285 beating the new radeon cards.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2848/4
Compare it even to the lesser 5850, and it beats the 285 in more cases than not, runs cooler, consumes less power at idle and full load, and is cheaper.
Plus it’s hardly available, even when you made your comment.
Since your comment, the GTX 470 & 480 have arrived, and while they may SLIGHTLY outperform (a handful of fps) the ATI cards in a good portion of the tests, they are still MUCH more expensive and would probably dim the lights in your house, or catch your computer on fire.
Not an ATI fanboy, I’m actually an nVidia fanboy from the very beginning, but ATI is at the head of the game right now.
Now, using the GPU for crunching numbers, nVidia is far more developed.
Michael,
I totally agree with you — since making that post I spent some time grinding through performance numbers for the Intel and AMD parts (not the new 6-core AMDs though) as well as the video cards, and the AMD offerings are more appealing in almost every way.
When NVIDIA announced their DX 11 parts at the end of March, I actually did a writeup summarizing all the performance numbers I was seeing online (here) and like you said, it’s poop…
It’s almost a 50% tie between NVIDIA and AMD with who outperforms who, and given the big price gap, I really can’t recommend *the new DX11* NVIDIA parts to anyone building right now.
That being said, I’ve only ever run Intel/NVIDIA (except for an X2 Athlon for a year that was great) so I’m sort of in the same boat as you…
Thanks for posting the correction to the post.
lol
The author of this stupid lesson is one big MONKEY… Keep stupid advices as this for yourself you fuciking stupid monkey!
RAM speed DOES matter but only if you’re dealing with heavy programs that need to transfer lots of files/data .If RAM operates fast then program will operate fast.If you’re doing PASSWORD RECOVERY(md5 hash generation) then any RAM speed improvement will SIGNIFICANTLY boost your recovery speed.
Video encoding/games have nothing to do with RAM speed because you’ll never notice any difference.For those activities powerful CPU is the most important thing.
That was a lot of hand waving.
This article has had the (probably unintended) consequence of convincing me to buy DDR3-1600, 8-8-8-24
First of all, I was expecting ddr2 at 800 to crush ddr3 at 1333. I was told that due to latency, ddr3 needed to have double the bandwidth of ddr2 just to MATCH ddr2……Your article has convinced me to the contrary.
Apparently you have ram here that has less than double the bandwidth and its slightly beating ddr2 800 slightly…..So, I have reason to believe that a lower latency 8-8-8-24 (as opposed to 9-9-9-27) DDR3 at 1600 overlocked (theoretically up to 1866 overclocked but mobo supports 1600 max) should significantly outperform ddr2-800 where ddr3-1333 failed.
My old motherboard supported 1066, but only if a single channel was used. Otherwise I only got 800 in ddr2. So I decided to upgrade once my mobo failed, and got 2x4gb of Corsair Vengeance lower latency ddr3 ram at 1600, and I am expecting good things paired with my Phenom quad 965.
Supposedly you need ram this fast to fully take advantage of what a AM3 chip can do….no its not cutting edge, but I prefer AMD over intel, and it was a better target value for my price range than an i5.
Now the bottle neck is my hard drive. I guess raid could work, or I might look into an I-ram drive. Im not a real big fan of the idea of transitioning to flash drive due to their huge expense and a fixed/low number of maximum write cycles.
Nick, glad you got things squared away; this is a fairly old article and with any of the newer platforms DDR3 is the only way to go, the bandwidth is much wider. This article was written during the transition period when the price gap between the two was huge and there were mixed-memory motherboards and chipsets out there so the information was pertinent.
As for your harddrive, you’ll want to read up on the OCZ Vertex 3 and SandForce SF-2000+ (2000 and higher) controller series on AnandTech; that guy is the king of SSD reviews right now.
I would point out that if you are not on SATA 6Gb/sec though, you can get something last-gen like the Vertex 2. You’ll get a 35% performance boost if you have 6 GB/sec SATA support on your mobo though, looking at 280 MB/sec on uncompressible data and up close to 500 MB/sec on highly compressible.
If you aren’t familiar with that “compressible” reference, check out some of Anand’s articles, lots of awesome detail there. If you are, then you probably have already researched all this stuff
i wanna play gta4 smoothly( may be in lower graphics such as 800*600) . Does my e5300 dual core @ 2.6 ghz with 3 gb ram ddr2 800 mhz and hd 5670 run gta4 smoothly.. I dont need much higher graphics. But i only want to play gta4 smoothly… help me plzzz. does my system specifications are sufficient to play high end games in low graphic settings with out lagging????”
I read a thread somewhere ton the web, saying that a CPU FSB 1333 mhz should use 1333mhz and not 800 mhz memory ram. Does it matter if you got a total of 1600 mhz memory running a CPU FSB 1333 mhz? And will it work smoothly?
Drakong, running faster memory slower works fine. It is usually more expensive (why people don’t typically do it) but in cases where faster memory becomes the cheaper option, yes it is fine to do.
Hi, I have a MSI Motherboard p35 Platium Combo witch supports DDR3 and DDR2. My friend bought a new PC so he gave me DDR3 2x2GB 1333mhz ram sticks, and I already have 6GB DDR2 800mhz. So the question is whitch is better for gaming and design (Photoshop, Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator), the DDR2 800mhz 6GB or the DDR3 4GB1333mhz?
Thanks in advance….
Pavle, interesting question… it has been years since this article was written, and given the higher bandwidth capacity of DDR3, I would personally recommend you spend the $30 and get 2 more sticks of DDR3 (4GB) of memory from newegg and use that.
Back to your question though, assuming you couldn’t spend any more money, if you had an older CPU (say an older Core 2 or earlier) than I think having more RAM (6GB) so you hit the HD less is going to help more.
If you have a faster CPU that can shuffle more data around the north bridge faster, then the higher bandwidth RAM (DDR3) should be the way to go.
That being said, I don’t anticipate either one being a night-and-day difference from each other, but benchmarks with your favorite apps certainly wouldn’t hurt if you had a slow Sunday afternoon and didn’t mind pulling all that memory and retesting.
Riyad..u made me feel happy..as u said ddr2 has not much differen than ddr3..bt i jus wanted to ask..my machine.is ddr2 ram of 1gb..bt pc’s working quite slow..should i upgrade the ram? If yes then by how much?..system..is ‘Pentium(R) D 3.01 Ghz’ i even dont know.if its a dual core processer..pls help..as i got dis pc.as a gift.so.pls let me know..!
Zayed,
With a Pentium D I don’t think the memory type would matter at all, that is a really old processor – and yes incase you are curious what is one of Intel’s first dual-core designs.
More memory is always a good thing, so upgrade it as much as you can (within reason). The Pentium D actually had 3 years worth of models, ranging from 533 to 1066mhz, so off the top of my head I can’t search Newegg for you to find prices because I don’t know what kind of RAM you need to be matching or FSB speeds on the CPU you have to operate within.
If you go here, and down on the left side filter by the memory Speed you need, you should find the memory you want.
BE SURE to check your motherboard documentation to see the maximum memory capacity for the entire board AND per-slot before you buy anything so you know to get the right kind.
Hope that helps!
Hey Riyad,
Is it possible to revist this subject in February of 2012 with the new memory that has come out? Just seeing how 4 years and lots of comments on this thread make for good info.
Thanks,
Jeff, DDR3 is pretty much the way to go with any new build. The new Bulldozer platform and SandyBridge platforms make good use of the high-bandwidth ram so its a no-brainer.
That being said, the question is do you get 1600, 1800 or some high-speed 2100/2200 DDR3 ram for the new build? Fortunately I’ve seen Anandtech, Xbitlabs and ExtremeTech do little micro-benchmark articles over the last year that show the difference, and it is in the ballpark of 10%. Sometimes lower around 5% and sometimes as high as 15% difference.
If you are strapped for cash, 1600/1800 should do you just fine. If you have the cash to spend, going with some faster ram to tune out your machine might be a nice icing on the cake, but won’t make/break the machine.
Honestly what will do you better is taking that same $ and spending it on either MORE ram, a faster CPU or a faster GPU if you are a gamer.
If you can already afford 8+ GB of ram, then a faster CPU would be my recommendation. And if you can afford both of those relatively easily, then an NVIDIA 570 or some equally fast GPU would be a great compliment to that (I am never enticed by the $500+ GPU cards, just too much money. But if you want/need it, go for it).
riyad,
i really had fun reading through. looking back and tracing the developments in computing is so much nostalgic. you are right. this is a very old write-up. today, AMD/ATI is giving intel and nvidia a hard whip on their asses as they gradually rise by providing users a breakthrough architecture.
what is true today is that hardware and software companies (microsoft in their windows 8 or AMD in their APUs for example) is now into utilization and optimization of everything you got in your rig. that means by little upgrades, fifteen to over a hundred percent difference in performance can be achieved. and as an additional fact, prices of builds today are extremely cheap, esp. APUs because you won’t be needing to buy a graphics card unless you’re a game freak. you can have a decent gaming computer with a budget of 275-350$.
Why SRAM replace DRAM (The PDF file upload on this web address: http://kur76sunnyman.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/why-sram-replace-dram/)
This should be a gift of Taiwan, but I saw much people had black heart. My heart was broken, and if it could not be held in Taiwan, world, world of God, you should let every one know and understand the next generation of computing system is coming.
Kurjoy
Taiwan, ROC
2012.4.25
http://kur76sunnyman.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/why-sram-instead-of-dram1.pdf
Is it still up-to-date?
I consider 1333mhz vs 1067mhz…